Having just come to the end of a glorious 4 day Easter weekend I thought there was no better time than now to share my thoughts on food guilt. It’s holidays like Easter, Christmas, birthdays or even just bank holiday weekends that can often lead to people feeling as if they have overindulged and then leads to guilt or shame in the days which follow. This is something I’ve experienced plenty of times in my life so I hope this post will help you understand what you’re experiencing and take the first steps to feeling better about yourself.
The first thing to remember is that at some stage or another everyone has experienced food guilt. We’ve all had the horrible feeling on a Sunday evening when we’ve had plenty to eat and drink over the last few days, barely exercised and think we have to be as strict as we possibly can over the coming week to ‘get back on track’ (a phrase which I absolutely hate!).
The reason we’ve all had this experience is simple – the diet industry! There is a whole industry who profit from making people feel insecure about the way they look, what they eat and how they exercise. If we all loved ourselves and had perfect relationships with food the diet industry would collapse. They thrive on pointing out to us all the things we should hate about ourselves and offer us expensive ways to fix those things.
Well the diet industry is wrong!
Most ‘diets’ work on the basis of restriction. Entire food groups are eliminated from our meals, we count everything which passes our lips and we’re told that if we go ‘off track’ (eurgh that phrase again) we’ll ruin all our progress. Restriction often leads to ‘failure’ because it’s only human that we want the nice cakes and chocolate as well as the mountains of greens. Once the feelings of failure and guilt kick in we often give up all together.
But there is another way. It’s not an easy process but if we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat anything we want the feelings of guilt will start to fade. People are often concerned that if they don’t restrict what they eat then they’ll end up eating cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. If you start to listen to your body and what it wants then that won’t happen. Sometimes you will want cake just because it will make you happy, other times you will want a nutritious meal which fills you and makes you feel amazing. Both are perfectly fine!
If you’re reading this and thinking it sounds like you here are some handy things you can try this week to stop you feeling any leftover guilt from the weekend:
- Focus on the memories you’ve made over this special time with the people you love
- Think about how much you’ve enjoyed all the food and drink you’ve consumed – food is to be enjoyed it’s not just there to keep us alive
- Return your routine to normal, you don’t have to detox or starve yourself, just eat what you want when you want it
If you want to learn more about this topic I would highly recommend checking out @laurathomasphd fantastic work on intuitive eating! This is not an area I am qualified to talk about (unlike Laura) but something I am passionate about so if anyone would like to speak to me further about it, please get in touch.
– Abi x
Healthy Abs 